Vandy staying home for Music City Bowl

December 03, 2012|Reuters

The Sports Xchange

NCAAF Team Report - Vanderbilt - INSIDE SLANT

Vanderbilt has been used to staying home for the holidays, but that's starting to take on a whole new meaning.

When the Music City Bowl tabbed the Commodores for its contest, it marked the third straight time VU has been selected to play in a bowl in Tennessee -- and the second time in those three times that it'll play about 10 minutes from its own campus.

Commodores fans had hoped to travel a bit further; the hope was that the Gator Bowl would take 8-4 VU over Mississippi State, which also finished 8-4. But when Wisconsin throttled Nebraska in the Big Ten championship game on Saturday night, the Badgers headed for a BCS bowl and that made a 9-3 Northwestern squad by far the best-available Big 10 team left on the board for the Gator Bowl at that point.

Between the fact that Northwestern beat VU earlier in the season (bowls often don't like rematches) and the fact that MSU traveled quite well to the Gator Bowl in its appearance following the 2010 season, the Gator Bowl's decision not to invite Vandy was probably a bit easier.

So while there's some disappointment over staying home, it sure beats the alternative. Given that VU didn't go to any bowl, period, between 1983 and 2007, this one'll be sweet for Commodores fans no matter where it'll be played.

It's certainly a big deal for second-year coach James Franklin, who signed a contract extension to keep him at Vandy after schools like Arkansas came hard after him. A virtual nobody in the coaching community two years ago, VU hired Franklin just over 23 months ago, and he's taken the Commodores to back-to-back bowls for the first time in school history.

"They make fun of me all the time, because I get emotional," said a teary-eyed Franklin, pointing to the group of seniors standing behind him at the school's bowl announcement party on Sunday evening, "but I sit here and I think about when we arrived here two years ago, the feeling that surrounded the program.

"That's why I get so emotional, because I know how far we've come, and it's so exciting -- the fans, the administration, the players, everybody has been so supportive."

Vandy's opponent will be 7-5 North Carolina State, which announced the hiring of Northern Illinois' Dave Doeren on Sunday following the recent firing of Tom O'Brien. Doeren will immediately begin work at N.C. State.

The only previous meeting between the two schools came in 1946, when VU beat the 20th-ranked Wolfpack, 7-0, in Nashville.

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NCAAF Team Report - Vanderbilt - NOTES, QUOTES

PLAYERS TO WATCH:

--QB Jordan Rodgers' up-and-down ways last season had a lot to do with whether VU won or lost a season ago. Rodgers was pulled from last season's bowl loss against Cincinnati for poor play and hit just 50 percent of his passes, but you'd be hard-pressed to find many passers more consistent than Rodgers this season. He hit 59.5 percent of his passes and cut his interception rate by nearly two-thirds (1.7 percent in 2012) while averaging 8.3 yards per attempt.

--RB Zac Stacy was banged-up a bit at season's end but VU would like nothing more than to pound the physical running back at opponents 20-plus times a game. The 210-pounder gained 1,034 yards and averaged 5.4 yards per carry, becoming the only VU back to go over 1,000 yards in back-to-back seasons. He's the school's all-time leading rusher with 3,036 yards and also has the speed to go the distance: He set the school record with an 86-yard rush in Game 8, and then broke that with a 90-yard dash in the season finale.

--LB Chase Garnham had an excellent second half after finally adjusting to life in the middle (he'd been an OLB previously in his career). VU's third-leading tackler, Garnham had 11.5 stops for loss and has become quite valuable in blitz packages.

--Franklin has been rumored as a candidate for just about every major coaching vacancy, but VU announced it had inked its coach to an extension on Sunday. "The thing that's a little bit scary is, this is just the beginning," Franklin said regarding that extension on Sunday. "That's what I'm so excited about. Because of everybody's support -- the university, the community coming together like never before, the alumni, the players, I really believe this is just the start of something very, very special, and that's why we're also so thankful to come up here and let everybody know, stop all the speculation. We're here for the long term. We're not going anywhere."

BOWL HISTORY: This marks just the sixth bowl in school history. Vandy is 2-2-1 in previous appearances after losing 31-24 to Cincinnati in last year's Liberty Bowl.